


The Prince

by doorstepdreams



Series: Missing Scenes [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Jack Zimmermann's Overdose, Jealousy, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, Pining, Sharing a Bed, Watching Someone Sleep, but very briefly, jack zimmermann's manpain, passing suggestion of Holster being into Bitty, pre-zimbits - Freeform, refers to both jack and holster, the hockey prince
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 12:30:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11806038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doorstepdreams/pseuds/doorstepdreams
Summary: for wrathofthestag, who is in need of some softness today <3





	The Prince

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WrathoftheStag (Mwuahna)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mwuahna/gifts).



> This is a "missing scene" I've invented set between Playoffs I and Playoffs II, the night that Jack walks out of Jerry’s.
> 
> warnings are all relative to Check Please! The Hockey Prince episode but doesn’t go too hard on the details of the OD, still be careful though!

It’s a dangerous thing, the news tab in a search engine. It’s often drawn Jack down a hole of seeking out nothing but the worst things hockey commentary has to say about him.

After opening tonight’s twentieth browser tab, he had mechanically reached over to turn on his bedside table lamp just so he could indulge his misery even longer. Even if he found the strength to put his laptop away before dawn, sleep was simply not going to come tonight.

The guys had all been warned off by Shitty from trying to bring Jack out of his funk. There were three stage whisper voices in the hallway about an hour after he’d left Jerry’s until Shitty’s lone voice murmured, “We love you, man, fuck everyone else,” against Jack’s door.

Which is why Jack is startled out of a deep blue reverie when a tentative knock comes at about 1:00 a.m. For a moment, Jack thinks Holster might have time traveled as his ten-year-old self into the present day before he realizes that Bittle is the small blonde standing in his door way. His sleep clothes are hanging loose and huge off his frame, and the dim light obscures his face. He mostly realizes that it’s Bittle because of the slice of pie in his hand.

“Sorry Jack, I saw a light on and I didn’t wanna wake you up by knockin’ any louder.”

His accent is as sleepy thick as it is first thing in the morning. “I asked the fellas if it was okay for me to make you a little somethin’ and they said yes, so I thought, what’s better for a crappy mood than chocolate? I wanted you to know it was specially meant for you so of course it had to be French Silk Chocolate Pie—“

“Did you seriously stay up to make me consolation pie?”

Bittle blushes and smiles shyly.

“I bake the other boys anything they want when they’re down and it seems to do the trick.”

Jack tips his chin up once and Bittle shuffles over to the side of the bed as fast as his droopy pyjama pants let him.

“Thank you, Bittle,” Jack says sincerely and nods down at the bed next to him. “Hop on up and take a load off.”

Jack doesn’t even have to move for Bittle to find a perfect nook for himself. The lack of chatter and the way Bittle keeps his arms bundled up around his legs is unnerving, so Jack bumps an arm against him and thanks him again. The shifty look and tight smile he gets in response leads Jack to realize he’s lounging in nothing but his boxer shorts.

“Oh sorry, do you want me to put a shirt on? I get kind of warm at night so I don’t sleep in layers. Shitty loves it obviously but I get that it might make you uncomfortable—”

He’s halfway to putting his plate down to get up before Bittle objects.

“No, no. You’re totally fine!” Jack chuckles as quickly as Bittle blushes again. “Oh darnit, I just mean you can stay put! I gotta get used to half naked jocks around when I move in, won’t I?”

Jack has already settled back in and made a joke of leaning his entire weight against a giggling Bittle as if he didn’t know he was there, and at last the tension has gone.

Jack tucks into the orgasmic silk pie and sighs through his nose in deep pleasure. The chocolate really is working. He looks over at Bittle who’s settling his legs into a flat pretzel out in front of him.

“Those Holster’s clothes you’ve got on?”

Bittle chuckles and grasps at the mountains of fabric. “Yup! He said I can share his bunk tonight since I’ve already missed curfew. Gave me some old stuff he never wears anymore since my jeans aren’t too comfy to sleep in. He said I looked quote adorable unquote, and kissed me on both my cheeks like I’m a dang child!”

A dark curl of displeasure flares in Jack’s gut.

He had known those were Holster’s clothes because they were the only things the guy ever wore to bed in all the time Jack’s known him. Jack never gave so much as a t-shirt to anyone because everyone knows what it means to let another person (who wasn’t a bro or Shitty) wear your favourite clothes.

Jack couldn’t be sure but he strongly suspected that Holster didn’t view Bittle as just another bro. He also suspected Holster knew that Bittle wouldn’t know how it felt to see a person you liked drowning in a sweater and pants that still smelled like you, especially when they’re about to slip into bed with you for the night.

“Eat up, mister!” Bittle waves a hand at him, seeming to have gotten used to Jack zoning out occasionally. “You didn’t eat a thing tonight and you’ll never sleep well if you’ve got a growling belly!”

Jack lets the shadows get pushed away and settles in more comfortably to Bittle’s warmth; the pie making him feel sated.

“So why did you ask me about the beer at Jerry’s?”

Jack’s voice hadn’t been anything other than casually interested but Bittle still looked as if he’d been caught with his pants down.

“Oh! Well, Ransom said you don’t drink and I just assumed that meant you never did, like, ever. Maybe he meant you just don’t drink at parties and I misheard!”

His nervousness seems to fizzle out of things to say and he focuses on rolling and unrolling a sleeve over his arm.

Jack ponders him for a moment.

“You seriously haven’t read anything about me on the internet, have you?”

Bitty shakes his head solemnly.

“Feels too invasive, you know? I already knew you as Jack from Samwell, not Jack as Bob’s son or Jack who had the…”

He stops and looks down, and Jack firmly believes ‘overdose’ is too dirty a word to pass Bittle’s lips. “So I figured anything I find out about you should come from you or one of the guys. You know how much they love you, they’d never tell me anything you wouldn’t mind I heard.”

He looks up into Jack’s eyes then, earnest as a sunrise and pure as snow.

Genuinely baffled, Jack has to put his empty plate down before replying, “Wow. I literally would not believe that from anyone but you. Just… wow.”

He huffs a sigh and looks back down into the owlish face watching him. “I think that’s earned you one bedtime story about me, you think?”

Bittle can’t hide his eagerness. “Oh! Well I mean, only if you… only if you think I should know… anything?”

Jack chuckles and rests his hands over his stomach, licking a few bits of pie crust out between his teeth.

“Well, I was a butt ugly baby and a fat awkward kid at my bar mitzvah, and then I grew about two feet and enrolled at Samwell. That’s about it, eh?”

Bittle snorts as he laughs and shoves Jack’s side.

“I’m sorry if you wanted the details on my bris, Bittle,” Jack says solemnly through a smile on his face. “But I think there might actually be photos of that online too, come to think of it.”

Their laughter settles and Jack looks down at his hands laying one over the other.

“Okay, seriously. Serious now,” he breathes a sigh and looks at Bittle sheepishly. “This is hard, actually. I’ve never told the whole thing myself to anyone before, except my therapist. Everyone’s already read about it before they meet me. Even her.”

Bittle curls his legs under him and turns to face Jack. Both their heads lean back to rest against the headboard.

“Maybe if you tell it like a fairytale? Like, tell it as if it’s about someone from history,” Bittle carries on at Jack’s confused expression.

“You know, tell the story of the hockey prince born into hockey royalty. Here, start it with ‘Once upon a time there was a prince,’” Bittle lowers his voice slightly, trying to sound distinguished.

“From a young age! He knew he was destined for greatness! For he knew that one day he would inherit the kingdom from his father…” He pauses and urges Jack with his hands.

“But… the prince also had a secret,” Jack continues slowly and feels as if he wants to back out.

Bittle’s eyes were  already wide. But this was Bittle, who never judged or made anyone feel ashamed. Jack owed it to him for Bittle giving him the gift of privacy.

“He was scared of failure. Terrified of it.”

Jack saw Bittle’s posture relax, a breath rushing out of him.

“So completely frightened of not being as good a king as his father,” Jack swallows around sudden dryness in his mouth, “that he would stay up every night braced with the fear of mediocrity.”

Bittle reaches out a hot thin hand and presses it into the muscle of Jack’s shoulder.

“And so the prince took… a medicine to calm his anxiety,” Jack had no idea the words were even in him all this time.

“And he slew trolls!” He hears his own voice in a mockery of the exhilarated commentary about him from that time. “And he took more… and he slew dragons!”

The bitterness is seeping through every word.

“But one day,” Jack has to pause. Reaching one arm from where he felt frozen to the bed, he presses his hand to cover Bittle’s where it’s still holding his shoulder. “He took too much. And nearly lost everything.”

At once, like a frantic sequence in a movie, he remembers the cold glass of life and death shattering over him as he passed in and out, and fought for hours to stay on the other side.

The sounds of voices and the sensations of being touched all entering a body whose heart had stopped a second time, was a mystery that he could never share. There were no words to describe it and Jack was extremely grateful. The last person he would ever allow into the true ghoulish secret of death was Bitty.

The moment wings past quickly. Jack squeezes Bittle’s hand and guides it to rest between them. He is grateful for Bittle shifting closer, and tilting the gold of his head so that the bedside lamp was behind him, giving Jack a little more privacy in the dark.

“So he was banished. The kingdom would not have him. He was the talk of the countryside, an embarrassment to his family, and most importantly, a disappointment… to the King.”

He says a silent thank you that Bittle doesn’t move or indicate any further interest at that. In fact, he seems to be relaxing into Jack’s words.

“But the prince would concoct a plan. He would venture back to the land of the Queen. There, he would reclaim greatness… and thereby gain entrance into the kingdom.”

His voice felt lighter now, using Bittle’s lofty tone from before. “And all was going well.”

He smiled wryly, looking down at Bittle as if it say he was finished.

But Bittle’s eyes were serenely shut, his mouth curled up into the remnant of a smile. Jack whispers his name once, tickling against Bittle’s fingertips resting on the blanket. Nothing. Just a slight rise and fall beneath the bundle of his night clothes over his completely relaxed form.

Jack allows himself to look, almost as if he were examining Bittle as a creature from another world.

The kid was so quick and skilled at staying on the move , it was impossible to hold him in full sight for long. Most of the time he was just a crown of thick blonde hair, light as a wisp moving around the spaces of much larger and louder men and boys.

Now Jack can see the fan of freckles over a tiny nose and full cheeks. The way Bittle’s lips aren’t outlined in the skin but just softer and pinker all along their border, ruddier near the opening of his mouth.

How surprisingly bold and smart his brows are despite his face rarely bordering on anything like stern or serious. Jack makes it to the solid, unveined line of his neck as it curved to the joint of his shoulder, exposed and rounded where the collar of Holster’s sweater hung loose, and stops.

Jack sighs and grips his hands together.

“Until, of course,” he murmurs to himself and indulges in pushing Bittle’s hair away from one ear. He smiles at how long it’s grown.

“This little shit came along.”

Bittle’s eyelashes flutter but remain settled on his cheeks and Jack pulls his hand away.

For one dark moment he considers letting Bittle sleep there in his bed, picturing Holster’s confused and maybe hurt expression the next morning. Instead he stands up, gathering Bittle in his arms and avoids all the creaking boards on his way to the attic.

He’s careful about opening the attic door but Holster is still sitting up in bed wearing his glasses and scrolling through his phone in the dark. He looks up in mild surprise and silently shifts over as Jack moves to deposit Bittle next to him. Ransom’s deep breathing above them continues undisturbed by the clouded tension filling the room.

“He fell asleep in my room and I didn’t want him to freak out. Don’t roll over and kill him.”

Jack offers no further explanation and Holster’s steady expression doesn’t request one. He draws the blankets far enough to cover Bittle as Jack moves to stand up.

Between them, Bittle breathes deep once and stretches, tugging one arm free of the blankets and dropping it next to his head.

Jack turns away so that he doesn’t have to watch Holster settling into place and resolves to go immediately to sleep, if only to force his mind to shut up.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [on tumblr](https://jack-manpain-zimmermann.tumblr.com/post/164194877180/the-prince)   
>  [Here's what happened with Holster the following morning.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11883648)


End file.
